The Magehound by Elaine Cunningham Read Free Book Online Page B

the company of two sun-sleepy lizards with scales that shone like commingled emeralds and topaz. Her favorite companion was Sprite, a lad no bigger than her small, pudgy hand. He always appeared so promptly that she suspected he followed them from place to place in hope of hearing her mother’s summoning song. She understood this impulse completely, for there was no sound dearer to her or more lovely.
    Even so, she hadn’t asked for Sprite in many days, for reasons she did not like to examine too closely.
    Fiercely she thrust the thought aside and ran toward a small crimson globe. She stopped short just as the globe dodged, then crouched and pounced at it as she’d seen the flitter-kitten do just that morning. She caught the ball in the air and bore it down to the ground with her. She landed hard, and the globe exploded beneath her with a satisfying pop. She scrambled to her feet, a triumphant smile on her face and a splattering of luminous red on her tunic.
    Her mother applauded enthusiastically and then made a small, graceful gesture with one hand. The red stain lifted from the girl’s tunic and spun out into the night, forming a long, glowing thread.
    The child grinned expectantly as she waited for the next part of their game. The thread would twist and loop until it etched a marvelous picture against the darkening sky. Sometimes her mother sketched exotic beasts, or a miniature skyship, and once she fashioned a stairway to the stars that the girl could actually climb-and did, until her mother took fright and called her back. But most often the threads drew out maps that traced paths through the back streets and over the rooftops of whatever city or village they currently explored.
    Tonight, however, the thread formed none of these things. It wandered about aimlessly, hopelessly tangling itself. Finally it dissipated altogether into a smattering of faint and rapidly dimming pink motes.
    Puzzled, she looked to her mother. “I’m tired, child,” the woman said softly. “We’ll make pictures another night.”
    The girl accepted this with a nod and dashed off after a pair of emerald lights. Since there would be no pictures tonight, she made a new game of her own. Earlier that day she had tied a short, stout stick to her belt. This made a fine sword. In her imagination, the globes became a swarm of multicolored stirges-giant, thirsty, mosquitolike creatures that hummed macabre little tunes as they drained sleeping men dry. She sang a stirge song now in a childish soprano, making up nonsense verse as she went along. Each imaginary monster ended its days in a splash of colored light. It was a fine game and helped her put from mind the small failing of her mother’s magic. On nights like this, she could forget a good deal.
    She could almost forget that they lived on the run.
    Her mother tried hard to make a game of it, and the little girl played along, as children tend to do. She understood far more than her mother suspected, but there were still many things that puzzled her. For some time now, questions had been building up inside her like the swell of magical power during a summoning. She was certain that she would explode like one of her globes if she didn’t speak out. Soon. Tonight!
    But she waited until all the dancing lights were spent. They left the roof and took shelter for the night in the crowded upper room of a dockside inn. The child always felt safest in such places. Nocturnal “adventures” seemed to occur more frequently when they took solitary refuge. She felt reassured by the sonorous snores coming from the trio of ale merchants who shared a bed by the shuttered window, and took comfort in the sword that lay, bright and ready, beside the earnest young man her mother had described as a questing paladin.
    She waited while her mother emptied the common washbasin into the back street and refilled it with fresh water from the pitcher. She sat stoically while her mother wet a square of linen and scrubbed